


Home Thoughts, From Abroad

by rthstewart



Series: The Stone Gryphon [11]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - rthverse, Cold War, F/M, Original Character(s), Original Character(s) - Reginald Tebbitt, Spare Oom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28555290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: A mission to Dnipropetrovsk to uncover Soviet ballistic missile manufacturing goes badly awry for Mrs. Susan Caspian (code name Rat, aka Susan Pevensie) and her partner, Robert Browning (code name Scribe aka WC (retired) Reginald Tebbitt).
Relationships: Susan Pevensie/Original Male Character(s)
Series: The Stone Gryphon [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/15017
Comments: 64
Kudos: 98





	Home Thoughts, From Abroad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveandrockmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandrockmusic/gifts), [metonomia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonomia/gifts), [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/gifts), [WingedFlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedFlight/gifts), [pencildragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pencildragon/gifts).



> To the wonderful, wonderful friends who gifted me The Stone Gryphon calendar, I give you this in return. A huge thanks to Larm who helped me get it across the line, on very little sleep.

They put on the green Rings, took hands, and once more shouted "One—Two—Three—Go." This time it worked. It is very hard to tell you what it felt like, for everything happened so quickly. At first there were bright lights moving about in a black sky: Digory always thinks these were stars and even swears that he saw Jupiter quite close—close enough to see its moons. But almost at once there were rows and rows of roofs and chimney pots about them, and they could see St. Paul's and knew they were looking at London. But you could see through the walls of all the houses. Then they could see Uncle Andrew, very vague and shadowy, but getting clearer and more solid-looking all the time, just as if he were coming into focus. But before he became quite real Polly shouted "Change," and they did change, and our world faded away like a dream, and the green light above grew stronger and stronger, till their heads came out of the pool and they scrambled ashore. And there was the wood all about them, as green and bright and still as ever. The whole thing had taken less than a minute.

Chapter III, _The Wood Between the Worlds, The Magician’s Nephew_

Title from _Home Thoughts, from Abroad_ by Robert Browning.

Oh, to be in England  
Now that April's there,  
And whoever wakes in England  
Sees, some morning, unaware,  
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf  
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,  
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough  
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,  
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!  
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge  
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover  
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—  
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,  
Lest you should think he never could recapture  
The first fine careless rapture!

* * *

“You promised me dancing and caviar, Tebbitt.”

“Gallows humour, Mrs. C. And no talking now.”

 _Head wounds are always bloody_ , he told himself. But Susan’s gash was bleeding badly. It was hard to see the full of it in the dimness but her straw-coloured dyed hair had turned darkly wet and the fur collar of her winter coat was soaked. He was kneeling in blood-stained snow trying to get a read on how many Soviet agents were still in the woods that he hadn’t managed to kill.

 _Blood-red, and sliding down the blackened marsh  
_ _Blood-red, and on the naked mountain top  
_ _Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below  
_ _Blood-red._

“Keep that snow packed on your head.”

 _The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek  
_ _The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break._

Ignoring his cautions -- and really, if it were otherwise, he’d be worried she was severely concussed -- Susan leaned heavily against the crumbling stone wall they were crouched behind, grabbed a rock, and hurled it away into the dark.

Machine-gun fire followed the rock as it hit some distant tree.

 _Kalashnikov_.

He’d come to really hate the sound of that gun’s crisp retort. “Ivan’s changed tactics.”

“I preferred when they were just trying to capture us.”

Six months ago, their routes up the rivers from the Black Sea had seemed secure. Their network of fishing boats, barges, and pleasure craft could take them from Odessa all the way to Kyiv and deep into the Moldova SSR and Romania. It was slow going but produced reliable intelligence from their contacts in Soviet heavy industry and manufacturing, uranium mining, and the military “defence” industry. Ballistic missiles and the people who built them were all coming from Soviet Ukraine. This trip up the Dnieper River had been routine. Maybe they’d gotten complacent with the last dead letter drop in Zaporizhzhia and picked up a tail. Or maybe someone who knew they were coming to Dnipropetrovsk tipped off the Red Army and the MVD or whatever Soviet State Security was calling themselves these days.

“It’s over a kilometer to the boat. Can you make it?”

They’d already missed their first pick up. With the gunfire, Valeriu would have cut the engines, doused the lights, and rowed or poled the boat into the middle of the Dnieper. Or, he would have taken cover somewhere on the far shore or further down river. Their skipper wouldn’t leave for another hour unless a patrol forced him out.

Susan shook her head and then winced. Lightly touching her temple, she grimaced at the blood that came back on her hand. She wiped it off in the snow, leaving a muddy trail. “It wouldn’t matter if I could.”

In the lull he now heard, coming from the direction of the river, dogs barking and rough shouts and calls in Russian.

They were cut off from their escape route, and being tracked.

 _We thought it was the Judgment-day  
_ _And sat upright. While drearisome  
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:  
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,  
The worms drew back into the mounds,  
_ _The glebe cow drooled._

Despite his warning to keep pressure on the head wound, Susan was patting down her coat, probably looking for more cartridges.

He’d emptied all his rounds getting them away from the dacha -- so conveniently isolated outside the checkpoints surrounding the closed city. But as Susan had said, it wouldn’t matter if she could find more. “My pistol isn’t going to get us out of this. Not against those AKs.”

They both had cyanide tablets.

 _From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!  
Arms, take your last embrace! And, lips, O you  
_ _The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss  
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!_

Fuck Romeo and Juliet. Fuck that suicide in the trenches. Not for them. She’d not survived a horrific train wreck for this. He’d not broken his back in service to England only to be buried in some anonymous mass grave outside a Dnipropetrovska missile factory. He pulled out his knife and hefted the strong, sharp thing in his hands.

_Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred._

Or the two.

“Tebbitt.”

Susan must have spoken several times before he finally heard her. 

Tebbitt pulled his attention from the tightening noose and the cold knife to focus on her white and bloodied face. It was like that night in her Washington flat after Guy Hill's murder. But that hadn’t been her blood she’d bathed in.

 _I am in blood  
_ _Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,  
_ _Returning were as tedious as go o'er._

“ _Reg._ ”

“What?”

“Forgive me.”

In her gloved palm, a yellow ring gleamed and hummed. It was… enchanting. How did it do that? Where had it come from? The ring seemed luminescent, giving off its own light that bathed them in something warm amid the dark, frigid Ukrainian forest. Without any thought or volition of his own, Tebbitt stretched out his hand to touch the bright, irresistible thing. Susan suddenly grabbed onto the sleeve of his overcoat.

But she wasn’t trying to stop him.

“Go on,” Susan whispered. “I’ve got you. I won’t let go.” Her grip tightened on his coat.

A snarling dog broke through the snow-covered shrubs and crouched, readying to leap at them.

_Knife? Or the ring?_

Tebbitt dropped the knife and his hand fell into Susan’s. His fingers touched the ring. The snow, the cold, and the terror vanished in a surge of blue-green water.

_Water?_

The claustrophobic panic of going down in his plane and drowning in the Channel bubbled up, threatening to choke him.

_But I can still breathe?_

A gloved hand was still squeezing his own. _Susan._ Susan was next to him, clutching his coat with one hand and grasping his hand with the other. 

And then instead of down and falling they were going up toward a light. _Air. Daylight. Trees._

Tangled together, arm in arm, they surged up, out of the water, and onto grass greener than the lushest park in spring. Susan sagged against him with a groan. “Don’t lose the ring.”

Keeping one arm around her, he shrugged out of his overcoat, tossed it down on the grass, helped Susan down, and knelt beside her.

In the full light of wherever they were, she looked much worse. Her coat was red-soaked and sticky and her brassy blonde hair had turned a dark and sickly brick colour coating the whole left side of her head.

He helped her peel off her outer coat and began tearing out the quilt lining. “We need to get you cleaned up. Make a bandage. Try to stop the bleeding.”

Their first aid kit had been on the boat.

“At least there’s plenty of water,” Susan murmured.

It took her comment to make him realize that they were lying next to the pool they had erupted from like a geyser. Yet, they were completely dry. The water he knew they had been _in_ hadn’t even washed away her blood.

He looked around. As far as he could see, grass stretched out and was dotted with pools of blue-green water and surrounded by tall, broad leafed trees. There was nothing else. Not a sound of wind, birds, bugs, or even water lapping in the pools. It didn’t even smell like a pitch or a park. It didn’t seem natural. It was the queerest place he’d ever been, and that was leaving aside how they’d gotten here.

It was so uncanny, yet so incredibly peaceful, he found himself yawning.

“Don’t fall asleep, Tebbitt.”

“I was going to caution you about the same. People with head wounds should stay conscious.”

With a groan, she lay back on the pile of bloodied greatcoats. “I’m so sorry, Reg.”

Susan’s hand fell open and the ring rolled out onto the grass. It hadn’t reacted to her glove, so it must have been triggered by his own fingers. It was definitely humming. Was it some kind of strange energy source? Some new technology that he’d relied on Susan to read up on and master? Maybe it was something she’d picked up from the Toy Shop? But why hadn’t she at least mentioned, “ _Oh, I have a new, secret extraction strategy to get us out of deadly peril”_?

Gingerly, he used a scrap of Susan’s tattered coat liner to pick up the yellow ring and wrap it up. Not wanting to accidentally touch it, he carefully slid it into an inside pocket of his old flight jacket.

“You must really mean it if you’ve apologized twice _and_ used my first name.”

Tebbitt tore off more strips and, cautiously, leaned toward the pool they had spouted from. He wanted to poke a stick in it and see how deep it went but, these were apparently a variety of trees that dropped no leaves or branches. Breaking a branch off one to satisfy his curiosity seemed sacrilegious. Up close, the pool looked more like a puddle and very shallow.

“Is it safe to touch it?”

“Yes.” She sounded very weak. “You’ll only be taken away if you jump in while touching a different ring. I still have that one.”

_Rings._

He bent over the pool to soak the rags and it was just like regular water, and fresher than any puddle should be. Shouldn't a shallow pool in a wood be fetid, or moss covered and filled with fish and frogs? There was nothing _special_ about it, other than the fact that it seemed as empty as the wood itself.

As he turned back to Susan, his eye caught a little cairn of rocks at the edge of the pool. Next to them, a square of bright orange cloth was staked into the ground, its contrast vibrant against all the green. The word HOME had been neatly inked on it.

_Home?_

They hadn’t come from _home._ They had come from a snowy, muddy forest a few clicks south of Dnipropetrovsk at the banks of the Dnieper River. Where the hell was this place? _What_ was this place? He wished he’d read more Jules Verne and H.G. Wells because that’s what this was beginning to feel like.

Tebbitt turned back to Susan. She winced and squirmed as he gently tried cleaning her head and tried to assess of how bad the wound was. “Does it feel like there’s something in there?”

“No. But I think the bullet took part of my ear off.”

The left side of her head was such a mess, he wadded up the cloth and pressed it to her face. Susan sucked in a pained breath. He thought another bullet had grazed her temple and there was an enormous lump on the back of her head. At some point in her melee at the dacha, one of the goons had shoved her into a wall. That was before the agents or army or whoever they were decided to just kill them instead.

“We need to get you to a doctor. Which, I don’t imagine, is around here. Wherever here is.”

He didn’t want to press her when she was so wounded. It took a moment to realize that the look in her eyes was one he’d very rarely seen. _Guilt._

“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten two apologies from you in a row, Mrs. C. But they do seem justified by your omission of this.” He gestured expansively at their surroundings.

 _I shall know you, secrets  
_ _by the litter you have left  
_ _and by your bloody foot-prints._

Her eyes fluttered and Susan’s pupils were badly dilated. She probably did have a concussion. He needed to get her back “Home” before she lost consciousness.

“So, how do we get out of here? You said there’s another ring?”

“I’ll explain, everything, Reg, I promise.” She raised a shaking hand to his face. “You’re owed the truth and so much more.”

He nodded and kissed her gloved hand. Sins not of commission but omission, of which there were many, on both sides. Since the day they had first met in 1942 on a muggy summer day in Washington, the Queen Susan of Tashbaan had always kept her own counsel. As her handler, he’d told her monstrous lies about her role in Operation Overlord and D-Day. After the War and another seven years in the field, he’d thought they might have been done with secrets but apparently magical ways of escaping death in Ukraine remained on a _need to know_ basis.

Susan leaned on her left side. “In my right pocket is a ring, just like the yellow one, but green. Green is always right. It’s in a bag. We link arms, you touch the ring, and we jump into the Home pool.”

“What if we jumped in a different pool?” There were hundreds of them.

“You go down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass.” Susan smiled weakly. “No assurance of an NHS hospital.”

_Curiouser and curiouser!_

He’d made a point of re-reading Alice’s Adventures after the War given how often Susan’s sister, Lucy, quoted it.

He carefully put his hand in the right pocket of her jumper and drew out a little velvet bag. It felt warm and hummed as the yellow ring had.

“Green, right” he repeated and shoved the bag into his trouser pocket on the right side. He climbed to his feet and then gently helped Susan up. She was swaying on her feet and deathly pale but at least the cloth pressed to her head hadn’t soaked through.

“I think the bleeding’s slowed.”

Susan nodded and gripped his arm tightly. “Tebbitt, I don’t want to run the risk of losing consciousness, so you’re going to have to get us home.” She took a deep, steadying breath. It was obviously becoming more difficult for her to speak. “To do that, you’ll have to concentrate really hard to keep us from going right back to dying in Dnipropetrovsk. It will seem like you’re flying, and it will seem like we’re in space, and then you’ll see Earth and then Europe, and you’ll get closer and closer to Ukraine. What you need to do, _have to do_ , is focus on _Home_. Pick a place that you can see, very clearly, a place you can find easily, and then take us there.”

“That was a limitation you should have mentioned earlier, Susan.”

 _Damn._ What the hell was this?

“Home? Something I know? _From the air_?”

She nodded.

“It’s like flying?”

He could see that every movement and word were costing her but Susan nodded again. “Yes.”

He’d patrolled the skies of southern England for over two years before being shot down. He knew every landmark of their beloved London cityscape. He’d flown over every church spire, every clock tower and every chimney from Dover to Portsmouth.

 _Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth  
_ _And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;  
_ _Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth  
_ _Of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things  
_ _You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung  
_ _High in the sunlit silence._

Bolstered against him, Susan settled under his arm and they stood together at the edge of Home. Tebbitt glanced behind them at the pile of bloody and torn coats. He hoped they could come back and clean it up; such a quiet and lovely place should not be marred with violence.

“Are you ready?”

She nodded against his chest. “Take us home, Reg.”

_Oh, to be in England Now that April’s there,_

It wasn’t April but, otherwise, Browning had the right of it. With thoughts of home from very, _very_ far abroad, Tebbitt shoved his right hand into his pocket and felt around until his fingers closed around the warm little green ring.

_And whoever wakes in England  
Sees, some morning, unaware,  
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf  
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,  
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough  
In England—now!_

Susan at his side, they stepped into the pool for Home.

It was immediately different than when they’d come into the wood. Leaving it, Tebbitt spied bright specks of light in an inky black sky -- stars, he realized. They were above the atmosphere and speeding, with no roar of engines, toward a beautiful blue-green ball wreathed in white.

He choked on a sob, comprehending the splendour he was looking upon.

_The Earth. Their lovely home was beneath them, spinning away, lovely and perfect. There were no poet’s words to capture this magnificent grandeur -- none had ever seen it before. Until now._

A big swath of sandy brown against brilliant blue came up suddenly -- northern Africa and the Mediterranean. They flew over the greener boot of Italy and to the north, a thick coating of white, like frosting. The snow-covered Alps.

He felt the pull, east, to Ukraine. But it was easy, _so easy_ , to veer away from the bite of bullets and dogs and their cold death in the snow. All he had to do was draw up the spade stick in his hand, just as he would have in his old Spitfire, and they arced away west, through the clouds, to skim over Europe and ever westward. The blue of the Channel was already beneath him -- surely those were fishermen and dolphins -- and then Dover loomed ahead. He knew every crag and curve of the chalk and flint here.

 _The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply  
_ _Out of the sea that once made her secure._

The gleaming gold of Canterbury Cathedral sailed under them.

 _The last temptation is the greatest treason:  
_ _To do the right deed for the wrong reason._

Tebbitt pulled on the spade stick and felt again, as he’d not in so very long, the joy of the little plane responding to his every touch -- she was agile and eager, fast and noiseless.

As before when he'd patrolled this place, he spied the thread of blue and dove toward it. The Thames was now beneath him and they flew west, up the River, swooping around every bend and turn. He knew this place so well, he could have closed his eyes, but did not for he would not miss the thrill of diving over and under the bridges, past the park of Greenwich and the Royal Observatory -- _I’ve seen more of space than they have!_

The Tower rose up -- the ravens had not abandoned it and England had not fallen.

He saw the dome of dear St. Paul’s and then Big Ben and Westminster Bridge were straight ahead.

 _Earth has not any thing to show more fair:  
_ _Dull would he be of soul who could pass by  
_ _A sight so touching in its majesty:  
_ _This City now doth, like a garment, wear  
_ _The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,  
_ _Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie  
_ _Open unto the fields, and to the sky…_

Just as Westminster Bridge had seemed to Wadsworth, the sun was rising in pale hues of pink and orange, boats chugged along the River, and a brisk breeze blew the gulls about. The pavement rushed up to meet them.

And then Tebbitt was standing on Lambeth Palace Road in front of St. Thomas’ Hospital. Susan was clinging to him, eyes closed and breathing hard. An orderly was already rushing out with a wheelchair.

“We’re home, Mrs. C.”

* * *

Providing identification and an explanation for a young woman’s gunshot wounds to the very concerned hospital was, fortunately, easily handled with a telephone call to their handler. Tebbitt filed away for later how they were going to explain the speed of their return. He didn’t know how long it had been since they’d “ringed” out of Dnipropetrovsk but it could not have been more than a few hours. He could say, truthfully, that they _had_ flown.

He was a reeking, nervy, bloody mess but he settled for just washing off the worst of it and getting two very large, very strong, cups of tea. The hospital staff, either out of discreet deference to his employer, or to avoid his alarming other hospital visitors, sent him to a private, sterile, little room. So, he sat, waited for word from the doctors, and tried to piece together what had happened.

He was dozing off in his chair and started awake at the sound of the door swinging open.

“Tebbitt!”

Lucy Pevensie rushed forward. She was wearing stained doctor’s whites and her cap was askew and perched like a bird’s nest in a tangle of blonde hair. He’d forgotten she was at a medical school in London and was already two or three years into her training. At some point, she’d also gotten taller and broader than her sister.

He scrambled to his feet and tripped over an empty tea cup. Lucy flew into his arms and hugged him fiercely. Their whole family was like that, especially since the train crash.

“How is she? How did you...”

Lucy took his hands in hers and brought him back to his seat.

“First, and most importantly, Susan is resting and will have a complete recovery.”

She paused, to let him absorb the news, and then continued in a tone that was both wholly sympathetic and reassuringly factual. “You were correct -- she has a concussion but the x-rays showed no other damage to her skull. She’s received a transfusion. She lost part of her ear but her hearing does not seem to be affected and she’s been stitched up. We've given her some things for pain and infection. I was able to see her briefly and I’m sure the doctors will let you talk to her in a few hours.”

He blinked and realized that he was not as sharp as he should be and had just been sitting with his mouth agape. He finally managed, “Thank you. How did you know?”

“That Susan was here? I didn’t. Your,” Lucy waved her hand vaguely, “did not contact us at home, as far as I know. I was here for a training shift last night. I had a feeling something was happening and then heard about our mysterious patient. I recognized the name, Susan Caspian, though her blonde hair did put me off for a moment which, unfortunately, we had to shave off to treat her.”

“She doesn’t like that blonde dye.”

And as for those feelings Lucy claimed, they were all part of a pattern of wild hunches and guesses that weren’t so wild at all, and somehow knowing things without being told. Susan frequently exhibited the skill and he’d seen it with Edmund as well. Obviously, Lucy had it, too. Whatever _it_ was.

Lucy was still holding his hand and searched his face. He wondered what feelings were guiding her now, what hunches she had made. “Reginald, can you tell me what happened?”

“We were somewhere. It was complicated. Difficult. And then….”

He weighed the options and then thought, _Why not?_ He strongly suspected Lucy already knew, and if she did not, the rings would mean nothing to her.

Watching her closely, with his free hand, he drew the humming green ring from his pocket and held it in his palm. It shined, brilliantly, like a gem, reflecting light that bounced off the white of her uniform and the smooth hospital walls.

Lucy’s face softened and her mouth formed a small _o_. She didn’t hide her emotions the way Susan and Edmund did. Secrecy didn’t come easily or naturally to Lucy Pevensie.

“You recognize it.”

The affirmation came in her silence but then she nodded. “Yes, I do.” Another long pause followed but waiting for a person to speak wasn’t something he’d had to learn from Susan. Listening was part of being a good spy. “Do you have the yellow one, too?”

He nodded and patted his jacket pocket. “It’s all wrapped up.”

“Good. And though you had been _somewhere else_ Susan was able to bring you back here?”

“I piloted us.” He couldn’t help smiling. “It was like flying again.”

Lucy squeezed his hand, leaned in, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Reginald, for bringing Susan home safely.”

She closed his hand over the ring. “Keep them safe. Don’t tell anyone about them.”

Given that Lucy knew about them, the rings weren’t something that had originated with the tinkers and inventors in the MI6 toy shop. So where had they come from? What would have happened if they had been captured by the Soviets and the rings taken from them? The strategic possibilities of this technology were astonishing -- and deeply worrisome.

Lucy started to pull away but Tebbitt held on. “But what was it, Lucy? Where were we?”

She sat back down next to him and fingered the green ring in his hand.

Again, he waited, knowing Lucy would eventually answer. Maybe she hadn’t approved of Susan keeping the rings a secret from him. Lucy wasn’t a spy.

“We don’t know. We call it the Wood Between The Worlds. It’s a profoundly magical place. The yellow ring is made of stuff from there and draws you there. The green ring takes you away.”

“And the pools? Susan implied it was like going down the rabbit hole.”

Lucy shrugged. “We don’t know that either. Wonderland and Oz and Neverland are as good a guess as any. There are other places, other than this world, I mean. Magical places, and terrible ones and…” In a heavy, sad voice she added, “And there are dead places where the door is shut and the sun is gone.”

A veil lifted.

 _The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.  
_ _O cunning Love! with tears thou keep’st me blind.  
_ _Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find._

“You all went to one of those places, didn’t you? During the War? Before?”

Before the summer of 1942 when an impeccably dressed woman in a blue suit, matching hat, and gloves had emerged from the Embassy car, effortlessly lied to a Congresswoman, and saved his neck, ass, and reputation. 

“We did, Reginald.”

It was like when he’d been flying above the Earth and seeing the whole of it for the first time, or maybe how the pieces fit together. There had been Susan’s obvious sophistication, competency, and the regal bearing, the lockpicking and sleuthing, the facility with codes, crossbows, and fisticuffs, the things he’d overheard in her conversations with Guy and Agnes Hill, his certainty that her true identity papers were lies and she was far older than they showed, and that men as old and and as wise as al-Masri and Walker-Smythe had thought the same thing. The night she’d eased Guy Hill’s passing, he’d known she’d ministered to the dead and dying before.

When al-Masri had reported how easily she’d killed the deer during SOE training, neither of them had spoken it aloud but they both knew -- Susan Caspian had killed before.

_When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._

He’d even read some Sherlock Holmes after that conversation over tea in Portman Square with al-Masri; he still didn’t like Conan Doyle very much.

“You must have lived there a very long time.” Long enough for the lovers he knew Susan had had before their first night at Tangmere Cottage -- she’d dropped into Normandy the next day.

“We did.”

She’d been the Queen Susan in Tashbaan, but that wasn’t where she was from in the code they had used throughout the War. “Was it called Narnia? Was that where you went?”

“Yes.”

"Then you came back?”

“One day, we weren’t there anymore. And we decided to remain here.”

And despite the years in Narnia they must have returned, seeming to be, but not really children.

Lucy patted his hands again and rose. “I’ll get you a blanket and maybe you can get a little sleep while you wait for Susan. She’s been wanting to tell you for ages but…”

“Susan thought I would think she was cracked.”

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Lucy replied.

Magic rings and childhood and first adulthood in Wonderland weren’t the sorts of things that inspired the confidence for espionage. Yet, he knew there was more to it. They’d been together, as partners, for work, romance, and otherwise, for over ten years. There had always been secrets between them, those they kept from each other and those they together kept from everyone else. Whatever value they both placed on honesty, duty had always been paramount.

On the other hand, Mrs. Caspian’s omission had resulted in two apologies, the use of his first name, and some very unaccustomed guilt. He’d need to think, when he wasn’t so utterly fagged, on how to leverage her feelings of culpability because they wouldn’t last long.

He yawned. “Thank you, Lucy.”

Tebbitt slept fitfully and dreamed of a golden castle on a white cliff overlooking the sea and a bow that was nothing like the Big and Little Joe crossbows Susan still favored. There was a lion, too.

He kept looking for Susan and finally followed a wolf through the castle that had four gilded thrones. He saw beautiful tapestries of two Kings and two Queens and thought they seemed vaguely familiar. There were animals and birds and strange creatures right out of Greek and Roman myth. But he couldn’t find Susan.

“Susan is not here,” the wolf said. “She is with you. Where she belongs.”

* * *

Tebbitt’s stream of poetry includes:

Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley  
Idylls of the King and Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Tennyson  
Channel Firing, Thomas Hardy  
Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, William Shakespeare  
Reference to Siegfred Sasson, Suicide in the Trenches  
Secrets, Lola Ridge  
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll  
High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee  
Home Thoughts, from Abroad, Robert Browning  
The White Cliffs by Alice Duer Miller  
Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot  
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, William Wadsworth  
O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head (Sonnet 148), William Shakespeare


End file.
